Roach Phobia

Having to say that, I tried my best to overcome all my fears and did a research on cockroach.

Why this topic? I went out with my secondary school friends last Friday night. This topic popped out when my girlfriend saw a cockroach. And to my surprise! I realized my this guy friend told us he, himself, doesn't really dare to kill one especially a flying one.

Great discovery!

So, I wonder is it true that nowadays guys don't dare to kill one. Of course, I am not saying just find one to kill for no reason but is just when this creepy crawlers that come to your way.

I never want to understand cockroach. To me, they are my nightmare. I will scream like hell when I see one and especially those flying ones.

In case, you wonder why I choose such a cute cockroach image for my hub. Ha! so much so that I can write happily without feeling disgusted.

Make sense?

Well, it make sense to me.

Cockroaches have been existed for 280 million years and there are more than 4,500 described species of cockroaches.

Eeewwww.... Yucks!!!

They can survive ten minutes in a vacuum, levels of radiation that would kill a human in one second, prolonged submersion in water, being at ground zero of an M60 cherry bomb - though shoe heels bearing down, as well as being inside active microwave ovens, will kill them.

A cockroach can live without a head for a week, after which lack of water intake will cause it to die. Not because it's lack of head but lack of water. It can go for a month without food, but only a week, as I said, without water.

A female cockroach can gain enough sperm from a single mating to reproduce over her entire life span, up to one year. A single female cockroach that had mated just that once can have 90,000 offspring within three months.

Can you imagine that?! How horrifying!! Oh my god! Which means there will be 90,000 nymphs (a baby cockroach is known as a nymph) crawling around in the house!!!

Okay, enough of their facts and history background. Not only did I did some research on their facts but also I saw an interesting archive forum on "who's afraid of roches aka XIAO QIANG?" To my surprise, there quite a number of guys who posted their comments there that they don't like to kill it and will scream like us.

Oops, I don't mean all guys. There are exception.

Despite it is so disgusting (to me), the interesting thing is there are people who like to use cockroach as name and even as a movie or cartoon character?! There is a music band calls Cockroach, a company calls Cockroach, a movie character, Sylar, who acquired the cockroach's abilities and even a cartoon called "Oggy and the cockroaches". It is about a fat cat, Oggy, who tried all ways and means to get rid of her "sworn enemy", the cockroaches. Frankly speaking, the cartoon made the cockroaches look quite "cute" instead of scary and disgusting. Even in the movie, Wall-e, you will simply just fall in love with that creature.

Of course, that's just part of it which I found, supposedly, there should be even more who use this name "Cockroach".

But what is the reason we don't dare to kill them?

Well, I really don't want to go into details of its dying process. It's disgusting.

My parents are always the ones who kill them for me.

Why is it that the older generation don't really afraid them as much as we do?

I believe part of the reason is that we never really lived in those kampong days where flying ants, flies, other creepy crawlers as well as other weird creatures 'living together' with us. I remembered those were the days whereby my dad even killed a python before!

To them, it is normal if they see a cockroach. To us, it is horrifying if we see one, we just hate to see one. We are too used to live in a clean and green environment. We don't really see rats running around nowadays. Well, I guess because our modern society, we don't get to see pests around us. It's just become normal that both sexes are afraid of them.